Taxi driver tells court he dumped woman’s body to hide sleeping with her

by Sam Dimmer, Coventry Telegraph Jul 20 2012

Emma Ewart and the canal where her body was found

A MARRIED taxi driver dumped a woman’s body in a canal because he didn’t want the community to find out he had slept with her, a court heard.

Mazhar Rashid, 43, tied breeze blocks around Emma Ewart’s body and put a plastic bag over her head before leaving her in a Bedworth canal last May.

But he denies killing her – claiming she died in her sleep at his flat.

During the fourth day of his trial for Miss Ewart’s murder, at Birmingham Crown Court, Rashid admitted having sex with the 27-year-old but says when he woke up the following morning she was dead.

And he claimed he had not pursued her, saying that Miss Ewart had made him “deviate from the right path”.

Rashid, who has admitted a charge of perverting the course of justice, said that he tried to hide her body because he didn’t want anyone to find out he had slept with another woman.

He said: “I was so frightened. If my community, my wife and my son found out my life would be ended.

“Because I was married they would ask why I had a woman in my flat and why she stayed overnight.

“I was thinking that they would abandon me. That’s why I moved the body from the flat.

“Not a minute passes when I don’t ask myself why I did it – why I hid her body. But it was because of my fear that my family and other people would find out that a woman had stayed in my flat overnight.